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Disputes Over Funding Legislation

“[T]he lack of a clean, bipartisan Zika funding bill has left me no choice but to
move forward with this action at this time,” Burwell wrote in a
letter to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) about the transfer, which totals
$81 million altogether.

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said the HHS's transfer of funds
to fight Zika is a move that he and the Republican-led House have been calling for.
However, Rogers referred to $76.6 million, not $81 million, being transferred.

Rogers added: “As we’ve seen around the globe and now within our own borders, the
Zika virus is a deadly and devastating epidemic that must be stopped in its tracks.
That is why the House has twice passed responsible, immediate funding legislation
for vaccine development, mosquito control, and public health efforts. These much-needed
funds have been blocked at every turn by Democrats in the Senate, with the backing
of the Obama White House.”

“All of it is extremely damaging to the entire biomedical research enterprise,” Fauci
said. “We're taking away money from cancer, diabetes, those kinds of things.”

But the amount still falls nearly $196 million short of what the NIH has requested
to conduct all of its vaccine work, both Fauci and Burwell said in their respective
comments.

Zika funding has been caught in a partisan battle since the White House made a $1.9
billion request in February. Congress adjourned for summer recess without resolving
differences over how to fund the request, and partisan finger-pointing has continued
since then (10 LSLR 15, 7/22/16).

Dwindling Funds

The transfer comes less than a week after Burwell said both the NIH and BARDA will
exhaust by the end of August all the money they received from repurposed Ebola funds
back in the spring (10 LSLR 16, 8/5/16). Initial human testing on a potential Zika vaccine began Aug. 3, and the transfer
will fund the work necessary to prepare for the critical safety and effectiveness
testing known as a phase II trial.

“We’ve already used up the money I borrowed from myself, used up the money that the
secretary allowed me to spend from other accounts,” Fauci said, referring to the
repurposed funds the White House authorized in April. “If I don’t get additional money—literally
within the next days to weeks—then what’s going to happen is the transition to the
phase II trial will get dramatically delayed and may not even be able to forward.”

NIH Director Francis S. Colllins will decide how to administer the $34 million transfer,
but Fauci said he expects there will be a pro-rated amount based on the budget of
each institute and center. With more than $5 billion in annual funds, the National
Cancer Institute is the largest NIH institute, and Fauci said, “you’re not going to
take the same amount from the cancer institute that you’re going to take from a smaller
institute. So it’ll be done in as fair a way as possible.”

BARDA, the government agency charged with developing medical countermeasures, also
was set to run out of Zika funds by the end of August.

Democrats: End Congressional Recess

On the same day as the briefing, a group of House Democrats called on House Speaker
Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to reconvene their chamber to fund the Zika response.

“This is a public health emergency,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat
on the labor-health appropriations subcommittee, said. “Some of my colleagues on the
other side of the aisle will stand up and talk about how we need to spend money for
biomedical research, but NIH is going to have to shift some of that money in order
to deal with Zika. And if they don’t, vaccine development will be stopped dead in
its tracks. They’re forcing HHS to take money from other public health programs to
continue to pay for diagnostics, so that we know the scope of the Zika outbreak. The
money is running out and our public health officials cannot combat this virus without
additional funding.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeannie Baumann in Washington at
jbaumann@bna.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Randy Kubetin at
rkubetin@bna.com

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